


Heroes (are much harder to love whilst alive)

by Castelau



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Season/Series 07, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 23:17:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15673287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castelau/pseuds/Castelau
Summary: Being a hero is easy, accepting your uglier feelings is far more complicated. Luckily, there's always someone who's in the same boat as you.In which Shiro contemplates what he has lost and found since he was last properly on Earth and is helped to some important conclusions along the way.(Contains minor s7 spoilers)





	Heroes (are much harder to love whilst alive)

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as an angsty ramble and ended up as shippy fluff.  
> Do I know why? Nope.
> 
> I started writing this straight after bingeing the entirety of season 7 in one sitting and feeling the urge to write Shiro.

 

 

 

 

It wasn’t that they were still in love. No, Shiro had barely thought of Adam since the Black Lion had entered his thoughts. Perhaps it had been a fair trade-off, Black demanded so much of a person that there could be no room in their heart to worry about such trivial things as past lovers; the only thing that Black fostered in a person was a connection to him and the other paladins of that time.

He didn’t know how Zarkon had had the space in his head to care for Honerva and the lion.

In a way, he was simultaneously angry and numb beyond belief.  
Adam had done exactly what he would have done in his position, died for the noble but ultimately pointless cause.  
That was who he, Shiro, was. That wasn’t what the mental Adam he imagined would do. Adam was the sensible, realistic one. Adam had always known better and despaired of his ridiculously soft heart. Adam hadn’t wanted him to go. Adam had always had a strong sense of self- preservation.  
Adam wasn’t even going to be a footnote in future records of the war against the Galra and it was only when Shiro realised that that he finally understood what it was like to not be the hero of the final hour.  
  
Shiro had always been the hero. Destiny, fate, whatever you wanted to call it, had always pushed that title on him.  
The boy who nearly drowned saving kittens from rising floodwaters. The barely-more-than-a- teenager who had fought tooth and nail to give troubled kid Keith Kogane a place in the one institute that had a hope of doing right by him. The man who’d faced death a thousand times over for aliens that had never and would never return the favour to him.  
  
It had long been one of the sticking points between him and Adam, that Shiro had been too honest-to-god good to act in favour of their relationship against his own notion of what provided the greater good.  
If he had, there were strong chances that they would both be dead now.  
Was that any better? No, but would that have been an easier way out? For sure.  
  
  
Black rumbled lowly in his mind.  
  
The leader of the lions had very little love for self-pity and even less time for it coming from Shiro.  
  
For a short while after his extraction from the infinite void of the machine’s head, he had thought it strange that their connection remained. Black was with Keith and made his protective feelings towards his current paladin painfully obvious. He loved Keith dearly, showed pride in every bit of growth that the boy had made since joining him.  
Maybe he had had an effect on Black. As much as he could feel the cool rationality of the beast guiding his actions, perhaps his own fondness for Keith had fostered the powerful bond that Black had made with his youngest paladin yet.  
  
The lion laughed deep inside his head and for a second he felt embarrassed, it was easy to forget that Black saw out of his paladins eyes as much as they did out of his.  
  
Black never hesitated to make his feelings about the people Shrio thought about clear. There was a sense of quiet, almost parental, love towards Hunk, Pidge, Allura and Lance, amusement at Coran and soft empathy for most of their other close friends. Only Adam and Keith drew stronger responses and they could not have been more contrasting.  
Keith was fire, a blazing rush of adoration and loyalty that could at times almost be dizzying. Adam drew a snarl on the other hand, a cool detachment that screamed “He’s from your previous life, he has no place in this one.”  
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted me to pursue Keith.” He muttered at the lion.  
  
Without any outward indication that he was listening, Black blinked in his mind. It was a cats blink, one that could as well show agreement as complete ignorance as to what Shiro meant.

 

 

 

“He doesn’t feel the same way about me.” He told the lion patiently, glad that he was alone in the hangar with it. The people of the Garrison really wouldn’t understand him holding a rational conversation with what was in their eyes just a simple machine.  
Black rolled his eyes and brought up an image.

  
_Keith was trapped under Shiro’s blade. His stomach churned as he realised that this was Black’s viewpoint of the fight between Keith and the clone Haggar had created._  
 _“Shiro, please...” Keith panted, teeth gritted as he tried to keep that dreadful blade away from his face. “You’re my brother.”_  
 _A beat passed, the two seeming well matched at that very moment, neither able to overpower the other._  
 _“I love you.”_

Shiro knew how the rest of that conversation went and he turned away from the lion, sighing. “You make us love one another. A team has to care for each other, that’s all he meant.” He brushed off, shuddering as the lion growled in displeasure at his words.  
The scene in front of his eyes shifted again and he realised that this wasn’t one that he had seen before.

 

_“He’s going to be okay Keith.” Allura was assuring the man in question as they both stood over the healing pod._   
_The wolf and Krolia watched on, all almost seeming to be expecting an explosive reaction from Keith, who’s shoulders were set hard as he leaned on the glass of the pod._

  
_“I hope so.” The current black paladin mumbled, meeting Alluras eyes for a second and letting some of the tension he was carrying drain out. He then returned his gaze to the pod, all of his focus on the unresponsive body within. “You can’t imagine all he’s done for me."_  
  
“Why do you even care?” Shiro questioned, shaking his head before he squinted up at the lion.  
  
“Care about what?” Someone asked directly behind him and he all but jumped out of his skin, whirling around with his fists raised.  
Krolia raised an eyebrow at his surprise. Of course it would be her, one of the few people around who could move silently and who equally seemed to enjoy sneaking up on others.  
“A little bit of warning would be nice next time.” He let out the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and rubbed the back of his neck.  
  
She seemed thoroughly unconvinced that she should announce her presence, stepping around him and perching on one of Black’s gigantic claws before she patted the spot beside her. “Does the lion reply to you?”  
“Sometimes.” He took a wary seat at her side.  
  
Shiro didn’t exactly trust Krolia, not yet at least. There was something vaguely disconcerting about seeing so many of the mannerisms he was used to from Keith in someone who was entirely Galra.  
Krolia was a soldier and at first glance, she couldn’t be more different from her son. Their journey back towards Earth had taught him that that first impression was horrifically wrong. Granted, she was far better at controlling her temper than Keith, but it was definitely still there.

  
“Actually, Black replies to me most of the time, not just sometimes.”  
“Keith talks to the lion a lot too. Even when we were far away from him.” She replied softly, a fond look crossing her face for a moment.  
“Guess we must sound pretty crazy from the outside.” He joked, fiddling with his new arm with what had become a nervous habit since getting it.  
“No, I...” Krolia sighed, leaning back against the leg and tilting her head up to stare at the machine above them. “I think it’s nice. Always having someone with you must be a great comfort, even if that someone is a gigantic, magical cat.”  
“Occasionally it gets irritating. It’s not like any of us asked to have a sentient robot poking around in our heads.”

 

 

 

  
Black rumbled out loud - most likely for Krolia’s benefit - and shifted under them slightly. She laughed bitterly at this, reaching back to pat the cold metal of the leg gently. “It might surprise you but nobody asked for this to happen. We can’t regret what we have gained, just what we lost.”  
  
_‘Don’t.’_ Black warned in his head but it was too late, Shiro thought back to Adam and felt as if he had been stabbed by an invisible knife in the gut.  
  
“You know, I - I used to be with someone, here on Earth. He didn’t want me to leave on the mission that I was captured from and I never got to say goodbye.” Shiro didn’t know why he was telling her this but it felt good to say it at last, to someone who didn’t have a vested interest in either one of them and now he had started it was hard to stop. “He gave his life in the first assault on Earth, despite having been far too sensible for that sort of heroics back when we were together.”  
“He must have known that it was a suicide mission.” She observed.  
“Exactly!” He glanced over at her, hands tightening into fists. “But they didn’t achieve anything by dying. And it just... I just... I feel like it was my fault. I’m not saying that I should have been there however before I left told him to grow up and grow a pair. It’s my fault he went out there with the knowledge that he was going to die, he said he was doing it in my memory.”  
“So you are motivating people to die in your name and you don’t like that.”  
  
It wasn’t a question, it was more of a statement, one that stung to hear.  
“Not just my name, Voltron in general.” He admitted, closing his eyes tightly.  
“I’ve told myself this before, you know.” Krolia said, placing a hand on his shoulder gently. “I trained Blades, sent them out to die in ways that were often futile. Voltron is a rallying point like no other as it is one that actually stands a chance of helping people in the long run."  
“I’m never going to agree with people dying for that though.”  
  
She was silent for a long moment, long enough that he opened one eye to check that she hadn’t simply vanished on him as quietly as she arrived, and then she quietly asked. “This person, you didn’t love them anymore, did you?”  
  
He wanted to deny that so badly, wanted to be angry, affronted and even hurt that she would suggest such a thing but... It was true. He hadn’t wanted to articulate it but he hadn’t _‘loved’_ Adam for years now.  
Shiro knew that he was fundamentally a different person than he had been when he left Earth for Kerberos. He had grown and had come to accept a far wider universe than he could have ever imagined, a universe where the lines between good and bad were not as clear cut as he would have liked to believe. Black had brought him to see a good deal more rationality in the face of danger but he could no longer relate on a basic level to the problems that Adam had had with him. Every problem now had a solution if you searched hard enough for it, problems weren’t limits that had to be adhered to, they were challenges to seek out, overcome and turn to your advantage.  
  
“No. I didn’t. That’s why it hurts that he clearly still loved me.”  
  
Krolia stood up suddenly, the hand that had been on his shoulder now serving to drag him up with her. God, why did Galra have to be so ridiculously strong?  
“Come with me.” She ordered sharply, marching him out of the lions hangar and to one of the Garrison’s vehicles which was parked outside.  
“Doesn’t really feel as if you’re giving me much of a choice but ok.” He muttered, managing to wrestle his way free for long enough to clamber into the drivers seat. “Where is it you want to go?”  
“I’ll give you directions, just drive.” She told him and he glanced over for long enough to see that her eyes were set like steel, expression unreadable.  
  
  
  
As it turned out, Krolia had an awful understanding of how traffic worked. Shiro was just thankful that not many people had recovered enough to be on the roads beyond the outskirts of the Garrison. Else there might well have been casualties from the couple of times that she forwent directions and simply grabbed the steering wheel instead.

Nevertheless, they eventually arrived at one of the leafier areas some ten miles north of the Garrison, parked up outside the gates to a small cemetery. Krolia was coiled tight as she got out, looking like she would snap at the slightest provocation and as such he rightly held his tongue about her traffic manners.

  
She glanced back to check that he was following before leading the way down the central path and off to the right, near the furthest edge of the cemetery, and stopped in front of a grave. He had to almost jog to keep up and silently asked himself if this was how Pidge felt when dealing with all of her lankier teammates.  
The whole graveyard was vaguely familiar, though Shiro was sure that he had never been to a funeral here and he frowned as he reached her side.  
Krolia pointed wordlessly at the inscription and it clicked. Oh. He had come here, once, with Keith.

_Heath “Texas” Kogane  
Husband, Father, Hero_.

  
“Keith’s father?” He asked slowly, glancing between her and the gravestone.  
Krolia sank to her knees in front of it, tracing the edge of the second part of the inscription. Her eyes were glassy, as close to crying as she seemed able to be. “He was a good man. I always thought he deserved better.”  
“Better than what?” Shiro shifted from foot to foot.  
“Better than me.” She picked at a piece of moss, revealing the familiar symbol of the Blades of Marmora, carved near the base of the stone. “We only knew each other for three years.”  
  
Stiffly, Shiro knelt beside her, awkwardly patting her shoulder. Give him another round with goddamn Sendak, that was at least more straightforwards than trying to comfort his unreciprocated crush’s completely alien mother through what was looking like a minor existential crisis. “He loved you.”  
  
“And I no longer love him.” She replied softly, so quietly that for a moment he assumed that he had misheard her.  
“You... Don’t?”  
“People change and there’s nothing wrong with that. That doesn’t invalidate the years we spent together, or the love I felt for him.”  
“You had a son together, that’s kind of a big deal. How would Keith react if he knew this?” He asked, trying to think of how one would even try to broach that topic with him.  
  
She snorted and lightly punched his shoulder. “Of course Keith knows. He worked it out pretty early on.”  
“And... He’s alright with it?” Shiro asked cautiously, not quite sure he believed that. Keith was loyal to a fault, that had to count for something.  
“We’re getting off topic.” She stood up again and offered him a hand. “Falling out of love with someone is to be expected when your lives take different paths. I loved Tex. I cherish what he gave me, but if he were alive today, we would be too different to have the relationship we once had.”  
“And there’s nothing wrong with that.” He surmised, earning a sharp nod from Krolia in return.  
  
Shiro took her hand then and pulled himself up, knees already twinging with pain from having dared to lean on them for that short space of time. “If I had been there I also would have pulled him out of that fire and smacked him for risking his life like that. But what people do after we leave them is out of our control.”  
“I get what you’re saying.” He let go of her hand, deciding that actually, he felt a fair amount better for that. “I should probably head back now. I’m assuming you’re not coming back?”  
  
She shook her head before glancing to the far side of the graveyard and he followed her gaze to see Kolivan stood there, deep in conversation with two Galra wearing the uniforms of new recruits to the Blades. Her expression was the same one he’d caught her wearing whilst watching Keith at times, if only when she though nobody was watching; a mixture of pride and unquestioning loyalty. There was a sadness to it, one of longing for something that was long-gone

Shiro turned away.  
The blades always did seem like a found family. Maybe she would find what it was that she missed whilst rebuilding that family.

  
“Oh, and Shiro?” She called as he made it to the gate. He looked back, wondering what more she had to say. “You have my blessing.”  
For a second, he spluttered. Was he really that obvious?  
Actually, he was more certain that all Galra were mildly psychic. They seemed awfully good at picking up on the things that he guarded to himself, like his feelings about Keith, and weren’t afraid to let him know that they knew. It was vaguely unsettling, to be read like an open book by a virtual stranger.  
  
He shook his head, trying to hide the reddening of his cheeks and clambered up into the vehicle once more before pulling his phone out and dialling Hunk. “Hey, Hunk?”  
“Shiro! What’s up?”  
“Listen, do you know where Keith is? You’ve all been released from hospital, right?”  
Hunk groaned, shuffling something around. “No, I think Keith’s still in. Allura told me that he might’a kinda bitten a doctor? So they like, think he has space rabies or something.”  
“Great. That sounds, well it sounds like Keith.” He sighed. Just how was he meant to get Keith out of this mess now?  
“I’m guessing that’s all you wanted to know? Hey, Lance and my families are gonna have a cookout at the Holts’ place tonight, everyone would love it if you could come!”  
“It was and, uh...” He paused, unsure quite how to respond to the invitation. He had barely seen the rest of the team since the battle against Sendak. It would be nice to see them again but part of him wondered if he was no longer truly welcome; Black’s attentions aside, he no longer felt like he was one of the paladins.  
  
The lion yawned in his head, dismissing his fears offhandedly. ‘One doesn’t leave Voltron except in death. Play nice with your family.’  
“I’d love to.” He finally says and hangs up, smiling gently.  
Right.  
Time to go find Keith.  
  
Thankfully the hospital wasn’t too far from the cemetery, he was inside and climbing the stairs to the fourth floor - where the paladins had been - before the sensible part of him had time to kick in and ask just what he thought he was doing.  
What if Keith didn’t feel the same way about him?  
Keith wasn’t really fond of connecting with other people and as much as that had improved with time, he never showed more interest in people than he had to for the task at hand. If he didn’t feel the same way, which he probably didn’t, Shiro would be ruining their friendship forever. He’d spent too long carefully curating something which approached friendship to waste it like this.  
  
‘Oh just get on with it!’ Black roared inside his head and there was a strange sound on the landing just a few steps up.  
“Shiro?” Keith asked, peering over the bannister. Kosmo was stood beside him with his tail wagging a mile a minute, a completely faked expression of innocence across his face.  
Of course, the lion and the wolf were conspiring on this, he should have guessed that.  
  
“Keith, should you be out of bed yet?” Shiro asked, taking the few steps two at a time and looking him over with a frown. He was dressed, at least, though he did look awfully pale and drawn. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He brushed off, resting one hand on the wolf’s head. “What’s going on?”  
“Hunk told me they were keeping you in because you bit someone.”  
  
Keith started laughing at this and pulled back one sleeve of his jacket to show a thinly wrapped bandage. “No. I stepped on the wolf’s foot whilst he was sleeping and he snapped at me. They kept me in for a bit because he hasn’t had his shots, not that I think anyone could give him an injection...”  
  
“That’s a completely different story to what I heard.” 

“Well, it doesn’t matter now anyways.” Keith narrowed his eyes and seemed to think of something. “Wait... Did you come because you thought I’d done something wrong and you needed to bail me out?”  
“Not at all! I, uh, I came to speak to you. There’s something I wanted to tell you.”

  
_‘Go on...’_ Black purred, egging him on as Keith eyed him suspiciously.  
“Look. I’d wanted a better time to say this but... I have feelings for you.”  
  
It felt like a relief to say it out loud, to admit it to someone apart from Black. His heart was drumming in his ears as he dared to meet Keith’s eyes.  
Keith’s eyes were wide, expression verging on vacant and it took Shiro a longer time than it probably should have to realise that he was talking to the lion.  
  
“Shiro, why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” He quietly asked after a moment, sounding really quite uncertain. “Did you really think I’d react badly?”  
“Well... I... I didn’t want to make things awkward between us.” Shrio admitted, taking a step back and immediately feeling Kosmo bump against the backs of his knees, essentially stopping him from escaping.  
Keith grabbed for his hands, grip almost painfully strong as he clutched at him. “I love you too. I’ve loved you for years but I thought you still saw me as a kid.”  
  
That idea was absurd, to the point that he melted into laughter. Keith, a kid?  
He hadn’t seen him as a child since he left for Kerberos.  
If he had come back to a child, he would have tried to protect him from a lot more of the difficulties they had faced. The point that had set in stone Keith being an adult on equal terms to him was when he had joined the Blade of Marmora. He’d shown such strength, such dedication.  
  
That was also the time Shiro had realised that he was falling in love with him.

Keith was nothing like any of his exes, he was so much stronger, so much more of a fighter. He was a hero, Shiro realised, and that was what drew him to him.  
  
“Hey, it’s not funny!” Keith added, letting go of his artificial hand so that he could lightly punch his shoulder.

“We’ve really wasted our time, haven’t we?” Shiro asked softly, extracting his other hand before he pulled him into a loose hug.  
For a moment, Keith tensed up as if he was going to resist like a cat grabbed by a toddler, but then he simply relaxed and plunged his head forwards into the crook of his shoulder. “We nearly wasted all the time we would have had.”

“We did that for sure.” Shiro closed his eyes and rested his chin on Keith’s head. It didn’t quite feel real, in the same way that all of their fights with Voltron had felt, like they were equally impossibly powerful and completely out of control. He hoped every day would feel like that, it was such an addictive way to be.

  
Eventually, Kosmo decided that he wanted in on the attention and pushed his blocky head between them, whining softly. They broke apart and Keith knelt down to scratch the wolf’s neck, his jacket getting immediately covered in an awful mixture of drool and hair from the animal.  
“Are you going to the party this evening?” Keith asked, glancing up at him before nearly being smothered by his pet’s giant feet landing on his shoulders.  
“I was planning to, you have no choice in the matter though, do you?” He replied, wrapping his arms around the wolf to pull him backwards so that Keith could at least breathe as he sprawled back on the floor.  
  
“Thanks.” Keith scrambled to his feet again, not seeming to care that he was utterly filthy from the floor and the wolf combined. “Yeah, they didn’t really make it sound like it was optional. I’m thinking about taking Kro- uh, Mom.”  
“I mean, why not?”  
Keith looked away, lips pressed in a thin line and, oh, yeah, Shiro realised that he probably hadn’t had too many invites to parties, let alone a family member to take to them. “Well, what’s the social protocol for a universe-saving teams-and-their-families party? Are they the sort of place you take your long-lost alien mom who’s only understanding of human customs came from a man who lived in a shack and ate roadkill?”

  
He shouldn’t laugh but... Keith’s delivery of the question was so utterly normal, verging on bored, that he couldn’t help it. “I’m sure everyone can cope with that. If they can’t, at least it’ll be a memorable evening.”

 

As it turned out, bringing Krolia was the best idea.  
Hunk and Lance’s families had a ton of kids between them, more than Shiro even dared try and count, and they were all over the place until the moment where they collectively realised that there was a purple alien in their midst.  
Should they have felt bad about basically abandoning her with that rabble? Perhaps, but she seemed more than happy to occupy them with some complicated Galra fairy tale which was probably about as appropriate for children as anything else the Galra came up with - but that was an issue for another day.  
  
With the children out of the way and occupied with the one thing more interesting than his new arm, Shiro had a chance to relax in a lawn chair and sip some awfully fruity but blessedly alcoholic drink with a tiny umbrella in it.  
He couldn’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon though, especially not when Keith was chased away from the barbecue and decided to flop down on the grass beside him. With the sun shining, he’d ditched the jacket and opted instead for a loose tank top, somehow making him look far less guarded than he usually did.  
The scar on his face was fading to a deeper, less angry shade of red. Soon enough it would settle enough to pass for a Galra marking and maybe then, Shiro would feel less guilty every time he thought about having been on the one to have caused it. Not that it was at all disfiguring or the only scar sustained by the team in their years fighting to free half the known universe.  
  
Maybe now they had defeated Sendak, the worst of their fights were done. He really hoped so, deep down he was tired of the endless battles and violent foes. Surely now, they had earned their peace.  
  
Keith noticed his blank stare and reached up for his hand. “Hey. What you thinking about?”

Shiro took the offered hand, running his thumb over his knuckles before he closed his eyes, truly relaxed for the first time in far too long. “The future.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know some people will not agree with my portrayal of Krolia and Keith's father's relationship however for the purpose of this fic, it worked to write it that way. 
> 
> Join me on twitter @BoMSheith!


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